EDITORIAL: City’s affordable home remedy is mired in red tape

When former Community Development Director Jerry Mucci left his job in June he gave the city an early Christmas present in the form of a list of recommendations to make homes more affordable in Destin.

Five months and rolls of red tape later, the City Council finally got around to unwrapping Mucci’s gift. But city leaders aren’t likely to pull it out of its packaging anytime soon.

At a special affordable housing workshop on Monday, councilors and community volunteers kicked around plenty of ideas. But at the end of the night all that anyone had to show for it was the same dusty ideas that Mucci proposed earlier.

Mucci’s proposals, which are basically a mix of zoning changes and builder incentives, are nothing groundbreaking, but they have plenty of merit.

The big question, though, that lingers at The Log is, “why did it take so long to get to this place?”

Maybe history can provide some answers.

Affordable housing, unfortunately, has a long history of being back-burnered in Destin.

The issue first came before the city in 2003 when then Councilor Cyron Marler complained that the city’s blue collar backbone was having a hard time living where it worked.

Since then councilors have created three committees, tabled meaningful measures, and kicked and re-kicked the issue back to staff and the Local Planning Agency.

Now The Log recognizes this is an important issue that requires careful consideration, but follow the bouncing ball and you are likely to get whiplash.

What once was a hot potato has perhaps become less important as housing prices plummet. After all homes are more affordable - even though unemployment is soaring and paychecks are being consumed by ever-rising insurance costs and a still climbing cost of living.

But perhaps it is in times of financial distress that we should solve the problems of prosperity.